Reading feministing.com today I came across a blog post and
series of reader comments that offer more examples of post-Backlash
style woman-on-woman aggression, where feminism is divided into
narrower and narrower camps until the movement itself is all but lost.
This kind of rhetorical turf warfare takes place daily throughout the
blogosphere.

The topic of today's feministing.com
post was sex-positive feminism and a reaction against it the blogger
called "anti-sex-positive" feminism, which was further parsed as a
subset of "radical feminism." You see where I'm going, right? (Here's
the link: http://community.feministing.com/2009/08/the-irony-of-anti-sex-positive.html)
The blogger further stated that most arguments against sex-positive
feminism are bound to patriarchal notions of female sexual helplessness
and utilize "the master's tools."

This blog event
enacts the stereotypes that work against feminism: 1) women can't
sustain reasoned arguments and often fall into name calling (ad
hominem) attacks against each other; 2) all women identifying as
feminist freak out about porn (whether they are for or against); 3) and
the feminist movement is all but dead and now so-called feminists just
argue among themselves.

So much of the disagreements
listed in this blog and within all the comments afterword would
dissipate with some clarification and term defining.

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I want to dial down the ideological anger/passion/ alarm and make a few comments/suggestions.

First,
no one ever wrote, in all seriousness, that "All sex is rape." Not
Dworkin, not MacKinnon. This has become a hackneyed truism of the
misogynist mainstream, and it simply is not true. It's a lie used
against feminists objecting to sexual violence against women. That
sentence was made up a long time ago and has continually been
mis-identified as an accurate quotation or used as a dishonest "gloss"
on feminism's positions regarding pornography. Let it go.

Second,
let's define "pornography," so we know what we're arguing about. Both
Dworkin and MacKinnon did years ago. The pornography statute MacKinnon
wrote defines porn as: "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of
women, whether in pictures or in words, that also includes one or more
of the following:

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(1) Women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or

(2) Women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being raped; or

(3) Women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or
mutilated or bruised or physically hurt, or as dismembered or
truncated or fragmented or severed into body parts; or

(4) Women are presented as being penetrated by objects or animals; or

(5) Women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury abasement,
torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or
hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual; or

(6) Women are presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest,
violation, exploitation, possession, or use, or through postures
or positions of servility or submission or display."

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Additionally,
the "statute provides that the "use of men, children, or transsexuals
in the place of women in paragraphs (1) through (6) above shall also
constitute pornography under this section."

Following
the spirit of this definition, porn never means merely "sexually
explicit material." Or "erotica." Or art documenting/depicting
consensual mutually pleasurable sexual activity.

Also
following the logic of this definition, sex-positive would have
absolutely nothing to do with "pornography" and everything to do with
consensual sexual activity; likewise, radical feminism is not concerned
with limiting consensual sexual behavior and is concerned (quite
reasonably) with eliminating "pornography."

Kellie Bean has been a Professor of English at Marshall University, an Associate Dean of Liberal Arts, and most recently, Provost of a small New England College. Author of "Post-Backlash Feminism: Women and the Media Since Reagan/Bush" (McFarland (more...)

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